Art.

Root Of The Matter

In Celebrating Tree Studios' Past, Exhibit Can Also Impact The Present

June 20, 1999|By Alan G. Artner, Tribune Art Critic.

Not so long ago, art exhibitions had the power to bring about change. The change was limited, of course, for it usually was a matter of shows influencing the direction of work by artists who saw them. Still, that power was as remarkable as any of the later effects of mass media such as movies or television.

Exhibitions that have changed social attitudes are something else. In the last half of our century, shows have been organized on behalf of any number of causes, but because the larger part of their audience already is in favor of them, it has been almost impossible to gauge the exhibitions' success as agents of conversion.

No such problem should occur with "Capturing Sunlight: The Art of Tree Studios," the show that just has opened at the Chicago Cultural Center. For more than 20 years, people of conscience have worked to save this oldest group of functioning studios for artists in the United States, yet the building on Ohio, State, and Ontario Streets still faces partial demolition by developers. If landmark status finally is extended to the whole structure because of support at a public hearing on Thursday, it will likely be owing to the effect of this singular exhibition.

Presenting 250 works by only a fraction of the more than 600 artists who lived in (or visited) the Tree Studios, the show celebrates a century of creativity by painters, sculptors, architects, writers, musicians, photographers, designers, illustrators and actors. As is invariably the case with a group exhibition determined by locale, the majority of artists are lesser-lights past and present, but there also are such Chicago luminaries as Boris Anisfeld, John Warner Norton, John Storrs, Richard Florsheim, Ellen Lanyon and Claire Prussian.

The exhibition became a pet project of Lois Weisberg, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, after she went on a tour led by artist, resident and longtime crusader on behalf of the building, Barton Faist. As Weisberg has written: "It was clear to me that Tree Studios has played a significant role in the culture of Chicago, and that Barton's passion for the history of the building, its residents and their artwork should not be ignored."

Each of the three rooms of the show has a different focus. The first is on the actual structure built by Judge Lambert Tree in the backyard of his Wabash Avenue -- then Cass Street -- mansion. Tree's wife, Anna, who had a strong interest in the arts, had taken him to see a studio building in New York so he might construct ateliers to persuade artists working on the World's Columbian Exposition to stay in Chicago.

The complex was designed by New York's Parfitt Brothers in collaboration with the Chicago firm Bauer and Hill. It ran along State Street between Ohio and Ontario Streets. Commercial spaces on the ground floor were to produce income to help keep artists' rents low. All the studios had connecting doors to prompt interaction. The work the artists created could be shown in cases in the hall of the building. A large garden allowed for informal gatherings.

By Tree's death in 1910, the waiting list for rentals had become so long that trustees of the estate eventually commissioned Hill and Bauer's successor, Arthur F. Woltersdorf, to design an addition to the building that would run east on Ohio Street. It opened in 1912, and the following year the same firm provided yet another addition, at the opposite end of the original structure, on Ontario Street. Medinah Temple had replaced the Tree mansion, so a final addition was never built. The entire structure contained 50 studios arranged around a garden. This is the complex represented in the exhibition by a scale model, artifacts, paintings and drawings.

The second room features work on many themes done by residents and a few distinguished visitors, such as John Singer Sargent. The styles range from Victorian narrative painting to abstraction and surrealism, though most of the pieces are representational and academic. This conservatism establishes an important kinship with another surviving group of artists' studios, called La Ruche (the Beehive), in the 15th district of Paris.

Like the Tree Studios, La Ruche was connected with a world's fair, the 1900 Exposition Universelle, for which it was the wine pavilion. Albert Boucher, a successful academic painter and sculptor, envisioned an enclave for like-minded artists and purchased the pavilion designed by Gustave Eiffel. That few of the artists who lived there ever were pathbreaking has in no way lessened the pride of French citizens, who long ago included the still-functioning studios among the city's many tourist attractions. That should have been a lesson for Chicago.